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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (39345)	8/28/2008 9:37:41 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 218065

TJ, not only the US has to export to pay for its goods and services it consumes: It has to pay as well for the machine of the state. There are three types of nation-states: 1) Saudi Arabia anmd GCC neighbors. All nation-states would like to be like them. Charge no tax. Sell single commodity. Everything in the country is cheap. Not paying taxes, citizens have to put up and shut up. Life being that simple no need to have much knowledge of how the real world works. 2) Other countries - the vast majpority- have to extort taxes from its citizens and businesses, to pay for the state machine. People are very vocal about what they pay, cheat the government, have huge informal and the economy has a huge % of shadow economy. Poeple are very much focused on how goevrnemtn behave. Society is very polarized on how that money is spent. 3) The US is a special case being the holder of the reserve currency. Government can print the money they need t pay for the state machine. People in a similar manner to Saudi don;t not need to know much about the rest of the world economy since the economic life is simpler. Not much people turning \every stone to know where the money is coming from to where it is going, who is taking more than the other. Now the US has to extort taxes form the economy to pay for its costs. Therefore the society becomes more polarized and economic discussions are part of the day to day.

To: TobagoJack who wrote (39345)	8/28/2008 4:10:22 PM
From: Joe S Pack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 218065

bloomberg.com World's Largest Gold Refiner Runs Out of Krugerrands (Update1) By Claudia Carpenter Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Rand Refinery Ltd., the world's largest gold refinery, ran out of South African Krugerrands after an ``unusually large'' order from a buyer in Switzerland. The order was for 5,000 ounces and it will take until Sept. 3 for inventories to be replenished, said Johan Botha, a spokesman for Rand Refinery in Germiston, east of Johannesburg. He declined to identify the buyer. Coins and bars of precious metals are attracting investors as a haven against a sliding dollar and conflict between Russia and its neighbor Georgia. The U.S. Mint suspended sales of one- ounce ``American Eagle'' gold coins, Johnson Matthey Plc stopped taking orders for 100-ounce silver bars at its Salt Lake City refinery and Heraeus Holding GmbH has a delivery waiting list of as long as two weeks for orders of gold bars in Europe. ``A lot of people are worried about the dollar, they're worried about inflation and now we have geopolitical risk with what's happening in Russia,'' said Mark O'Byrne, managing director of brokerage Gold and Silver Investments Ltd. in Dublin. O'Byrne said his company's sales are up fourfold this year, heading for a record since its founding in 2003. Gold rose to a record in March and is 25 percent higher than this time last year, while the dollar dropped 7.4 percent against the euro. Silver is up 15 percent in the period.